Shooting victim best ammo for gun control

Virginia Tech survivor targets loopholes in gun laws

By Dan Freedman

Published 11:45 pm, Sunday, June 3, 2012

Photo: Seth Wenig

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New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, right, joined by family and friends of those injured and killed in the shootings in Tucson, Ariz., at Virginia Tech and Columbine High School in Colorado, speaks about gun control during a news conference at City Hall in New York, Monday, Jan. 24, 2011. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig) less

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, right, joined by family and friends of those injured and killed in the shootings in Tucson, Ariz., at Virginia Tech and Columbine High School in Colorado, speaks about gun ... more

Indeed, Goddard, 26, never thought much about the gun issue as a Virginia Tech student majoring in physics and drilling with the ROTC cadet corps.

Getting shot four times during the 2007 Virginia Tech rampage changed all that.

"I assumed we did everything we could to keep guns out of the hands of someone who should never have them,'' Goddard said in his sun-infused office at the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, an "I am Trayvon Martin'' sign in the window. "I was shocked to learn that we don't.''

These days Goddard lobbies lawmakers to require background checks for all gun sales, even private ones. He travels the nation on speaking engagements and was featured in a documentary "Living for 32'' (the number of dead at Virginia Tech).

Gunshot victims and victims' survivors have a long history as spokespeople for gun control. The Brady Campaign's namesake, James Brady, was shot along with President Reagan in the 1981 assassination attempt.

Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, D-N.Y., who introduced the legislation to require background checks for all gun sales (and not just those sold by federally licensed firearms dealers), lost her husband Dennis in 1993 when a shooter killed five on a Long Island Railroad commuter train.

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Goddard has recalled the events of that day — April 16, 2007 — hundreds of times. But in each retelling, he seems transported back to those 10 minutes of French class on the second floor of Norris Hall, the building where the majority of shooter Seung Hui Cho's 32 victims died.

He spares no horrific detail — the rising crescendo of gun shots, scrambling for cover amid overturned desks, the smell of gun powder, gurgling sounds from a wounded classmate, a sea of shell casings on the floor, the first bullet's impact like a swift kick above his left knee.

"It was that moment when I realized this is real, I just got shot, this is really happening,'' he said.

Goddard never saw Cho's face as the gunman pulled the triggers of two handguns. And it was only when police burst into the room and shouted "shooter's down'' that he realized Cho had saved the last bullet for himself.

Medical personnel determined that in addition to his left knee, Goddard had been shot in both hips and his armpit, with the final bullet exiting his right shoulder. Bullet fragments remain in both hips and knee, and a titanium rod is implanted in his left thigh.

It could have been worse. A female classmate who arrived late had taken the first seat nearest the door. "She never made it out of her chair,'' he said.

Fortunately for Goddard, the shots didn't penetrate any of his major arteries or organs. He spent six days in the hospital in a morphine-induced haze. Cho had a long history of mental health problems and had been ordered to receive outpatient psychiatric care.

But even though adjudicated mental illness disqualifies an individual from gun purchases under federal law, Virginia required only that the names of those committed to mental hospitals be forwarded to the FBI's background-check system. Because Cho had outpatient care, he passed the background check when he purchased the two guns used in the massacre.

This loophole plus the ease of evading the system entirely through private purchases infuriated Goddard. But he had to recover from his wounds and graduate from college.

Born to parents working on international development projects, Goddard grew up in hotspots including Mogadishu, Bangladesh and Cairo. His family had breathed a sigh of relief when he enrolled at Virginia Tech astride the placid Blue Ridge Mountains.

Time went by and Goddard tried to get on with his life. But he kept coming back to the shooting, especially while watching reports of subsequent rampages on TV news. After a man in Binghamton, N.Y., in 2009 killed 13 by firing 98 shots from two guns, Goddard called the Brady campaign's then-president Paul Helmke and told him, "I have to do something about this.''

Goddard wore a hidden camera to gun shows in cities across America to illustrate how easy it is to legally purchase weapons with "no tax, no paperwork, no nothing'' as one seller in San Antonio put it.

His outspokenness has earned him a reputation as the gun-control advocate that gun-rights supporters love to hate.

"This (expletive) Collin Goddard wants to destroy a whole country's Constitutional Rights by fooling people to believe that more restrictions will make us safer,'' is one such comment.

Goddard brushes off most of the criticism. But the one that stings the most goes something like: If you'd had a gun that day at Virginia Tech, you would have walked out of Norris Hall without a scratch, all your classmates would be alive and you'd be a hero.

"I would love to think I could have saved the day,'' Goddard said. But "there's no way I can say 'yes, I would have saved people.' There's no way anyone could answer that question.''